After the moderate disaster that was 2012’s Ninja Gaiden 3 I’d basically given up seeing the number four next to the words “Ninja Gaiden,” but here we are. Platinum Games brought my dreams back from the brink with Metal Gear Rising and they’ve done it again with Ninja Gaiden 4. Given the state Platinum Games has been in recently it’s even more of a surprise that it’s actually good! How good? Well I can’t wait to tell you.
The initial thing you’ll notice from playing Ninja Gaiden 4 is that it FEELS like a Ninja Gaiden game, at least once you go into the control settings and switch left trigger to block as god intended. This might not sound like an accomplishment (and for many reviewers complaining about “old school design philosophies” it isn’t) but after a decade away and in the hands of a different studio it wasn’t always a guarantee. It’s still as fast and hard as well, despite initial concerns in the trailers that enemies weren’t being aggressive enough, in fact Platinum seems to have woven many different mechanics from previous Ninja Gaiden games into NG4, leading to an arguable “best of” experience. Enemies are about as durable as they were in Ninja Gaiden Black but can still be instantly killed after removing a limb, and they can also be stealth killed more organically and less scripted/forced than they were in NG3. Equipment also returns from NGB, allowing you to equip special items that increase defense, damage, or more special fringe abilities, and I’m sure the four people who missed that after the mechanic was cut from the sequels are really excited about it.
What’s even more interesting however are the clear Platinum-isms that have been added because Platinum Games couldn’t help themselves, but fortunately most of these additions are for the better. Ninja Gaiden has never been an especially deep franchise from a mechanics standpoint but Platinum has added all the classics here: dodge offsets, parries, perfect dodges, and more. While this tangentially raises the skill floor it absolutely raises the skill ceiling for those who want to master the game, and Platinum has catered to those sorts of players even more with their traditional level rank system as well. Ninja Gaiden has dispassionately had level scores in the past but they never hit quite as hard as the classic S through D rating systems that have graced every other franchise in the genre in one way or another. As in those other games you’re penalized for deaths and item uses on your way to an S ranking, which seems to conflict a little with how Ninja Gaiden has approached death and healing before and even how NG4 is now. NG4 continues the Ninja Gaiden philosophy of constantly giving the player items in every box you find throughout the level, and compared to the likes of Bayonetta and Devil May Cry where consumables are almost never given to the player for free it feels a little bit like mixed messaging. “Hey, here’s all these healing items and even more consumables that increase your damage or defense! But if you use them I’m going to give you a x0.75 multiplier at the end of the level…”
Said damage-boost consumables are another hallmark of Platinum Games but the most obvious Platinum-ism than everything I’ve said before are the boss fights. Ninja Gaiden is a franchise I love to death but compared to every other game in the genre their bosses have SUCKED. Not in terms of difficulty or unfairness (mostly) but just in terms of scale, investment, music, and everything else that makes the bosses in the likes Metal Gear Rising or Devil May Cry fun and memorable. Frankly Ninja Gaiden‘s bosses peaked with Alma and Fiend Ryu in 2004 and it’s been downhill ever since… until now. I’m not going to say that every boss in Ninja Gaiden 4 is a banger, or that all the music in NG4 is fantastic, but what Platinum has delivered here are some of the best bosses and boss themes in the franchise, helped perhaps in part by the addition of a lock on mechanic which feels like heresy but obviously helps in these one on one battles. Additionally almost all of them come with my personal wish since Ninja Gaiden 2 where you can actually do finishing moves at the end of the fight, which is a real joy since we’ve been able to tear enemies to pieces since 2008 but until now so many of the bosses have been immune to that treatment. Well not any more!
This more cinematic nature is everywhere from the boss introductions to level traversal, and this is unfortunately where Ninja Gaiden 4 has its first misstep. You will frequently travel between level areas by riding on rails, flying on wind currents, and using your grappling hook to transition to wall running between these environments, but for some reason the camera isn’t always on your side. Frequently you will run out of wind to glide on or see a oncoming threat on your rail and your only hint that you can escape is a little button prompt in the corner of the screen. You can’t even see what you’re going to transition onto most of the time for reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend, and while so many of these sequences provide automatic momentum and traversal to the point that you don’t really NEED to see where you’re going it’s still wild to me that you can’t. It’d just be an irritant if these sequences only happened a few times but they’re a major part of several levels and the most “Platinum” thing you will encounter outside of the bosses and it almost feels like it needs to be patched.
There is one major change to combat that you could also blame on Platinum and that’s the “Bloodraven Form,” a type of super transformation used by protagonist Yakumo that one could be forgiven for mistaking as similar to DMC‘s Devil Trigger. Both are super forms that changes or upgrades your attacks whose duration is dictated by a meter, but in NG4‘s case the Bloodraven Form is more easily charged and is meant primarily to stop enemies from using their own special power attacks. In this way Ninja Gaiden 4 is the most telegraphed game in the franchise’s history as almost every enemy has at least one power attack where they glow a certain color and have a warning indicator appear. If you don’t get out of the way they’ll break your guard and or damage you, but you can counterattack or block in Bloodraven form to interrupt or nullify the power attack and that in turn sets the rhythm for the combat in NG4. Especially against bosses there is a definite tempo for combat that makes Bloodraven much more of a cornerstone for your moveset than Devil Trigger is in DMC, and while purists might see it as a crutch I think it’s pretty well balanced in Yakumo’s case (we’ll talk about Ryu later) because so many of the Bloodraven animations are slightly longer than you would expect so it’s definitely a part of that skill floor and ceiling I mentioned earlier. Of course if you don’t want to worry about an enemy pulling out a power move you can just Bloodraven them to death but then you’ll find yourself out of meter when the five to ten other enemies on screen decide to do theirs. There’s a balance here and as someone who loved quickly flipping in and out of Devil Triggers when playing as Vergil in DMC5 this is a feature I quite enjoyed as an alternative to the “win this fight” button that transformations can be in the genre.
You may have noticed that I mentioned a character named Yakumo as a player character alongside series regular Ryu Hayabusa, and in part it’s thanks to his inclusion that we get interesting things like Bloodraven form in the game. Ryu has been around for so long (in canon it’s been at least 20 years since Ninja Gaiden 2) that him suddenly pulling out blood magic to enhance his weapons would be so far out of left field he’d be in a different stadium, but a new guy like Yakumo can do whatever he wants. So we suddenly have Raven Ninjas, the “dark counterparts” to Ryu’s Dragon Ninjas that “operate in the shadows and the dirt to save the world in our way” while the Dragon Ninja “hog all the heroic spotlight.” Or that’s their story at least, as these “heroic operations in the shadows” often appear to be doing things such as killing people’s political opponents and loud drunkards for petty cash, as you’ll see if you engage with NG4‘s optional side missions. As such the game’s story is a chance to get to know this new side of the Ninja Gaiden universe, but in my opinion the story doesn’t go far enough with what started as an interesting premise.
“Several years ago” the Dark Dragon attacked Tokyo and nearly destroyed it (reminder this exists in the Dead or Alive universe so one assumes the cast was having a volleyball vacation while this was going on) but was eventually struck down by Ryu Hayabusa off screen. While the dragon was vanquished its corpse and miasma still lingers, poisoning the city with toxic rain and leading most people to flee while the rest are policed by the Divine Dragon Order (DDO), a paramilitary organization. The Raven Ninja trace their origins back to the Dark Dragon and are always looking for ways to prevent its return, obsessing particularly around a prophecy that killing the Dark Dragon’s priestess will stop the Dark Dragon for good. Yakumo gets within a blade’s length right at the start of the game of doing just that, only for the priestess to go “Actually your prophecy is completely wrong. If you REALLY want to stop the Dark Dragon you have to help me revive it and then purify it once it’s at full strength!” Now, I and anyone else that’s read a book before would expect that this is all a trick to save her own skin and resurrect the dark god dragon she represents, but Yakumo for reasons that can only be described as “cheerful pretty lady is talking to me” agrees to go along with it. As such you spend most of the game fighting through the DDO who understandably doesn’t want you to release the Dark Dragon to destroy Tokyo even more, and it sets Yakumo on a perfect path to clash with Ryu who one would expect also has opinions on bringing back the Dark Dragon again since he’s killed it three times already.
It’s important to remember at this point that Ninja Gaiden games have never been praised for their story. In fact it was quite the opposite in Ninja Gaiden 3‘s case, but I for one thought there was a lot of promise in this introduction. The term “unreliable narrator” was front and center in my mind as we were introduced to these unknown shadowy Ravens who kill for money and claim to be just as powerful and experienced as the Dragon Ninja but have no idea what fiends are and hardly seem to believe in the supernatural at all. We only have their word as the point of view characters in the story that they’re the good guys! WHAT IF they’re more like a good-leaning offshoot of series villains the Black Spiders with delusions of grandeur? What if this priestess is preying on their desire to finally be the good guys and one-up the Dragon Ninja that blinds them to the total insanity of reviving an evil dragon just for Ryu to have to kill it again? What if…
Sadly the story doesn’t go beyond one dimensional, and while I won’t spoil the story beats the final product was like seeing chess pieces pulled out but discovering we were setting up the board to play checkers. The pieces description is particularly apt as several characters only show up for maybe two scenes and tease their plot relevance only to disappear by the next chapter, wasting the story’s perfectly good narrative direction in favor of doing something less interesting. It’s still a far better story than NG3 because it doesn’t have delusions of grandeur, and in many ways it’s also better than NG2 because it’s slightly more interesting than “Ryu go around the world fighting fiends because we said so.” But this is where I ask what’s worse: a boring story because the premise is so bare-bones or a boring story that squanders the pieces it had that could have made it more interesting? Personally I finished NG4 feeling disappointed they didn’t do more on the story front and wonder (but don’t expect or hope) if future DLC may do more with the material.
Something everyone is hoping the DLC will do is flesh out our hero Ryu Hayabusa, who as predicted is stuck with the Dante from Devil May Cry 4 treatment in the base version of NG4. What this means in practice is that he has less moves than you’d expect, less screen time than you’d expect, and less weapons than you’d expect, boiling down to being playable in maybe a quarter of the missions with only one weapon. If you think all of this leads to him feeling rather tacked on and out of place you’re right, especially with his shorter and more deliberate combos compared to Yakumo’s constant “wolverine in a tumble dryer” combat style. In many ways it’s the worst of both worlds, as NG4 steps away from giving Ryu his insanely long attack strings from NG3 while also sticking him against classic enemies from NG2 with their durability seemingly doubled, which results in Ryu at least initially feeling like he did in Ninja Gaiden Black i.e. slower and weaker than he has in seventeen years. Once I got over the initial shock and started fighting the usual enemies that Yakumo had been dealing with it was clear that Ryu is undeniably more powerful than Yakumo is (in terms of damage output) and it’s just my own expectations that were holding him down. To be clear, this is not the Ryu that tears enemies to pieces in vanilla NG2 or NG3 but this is closer to the Ryu from Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma/Black when you’re fighting the shockingly durable claw ninjas. It’s fun in that you’re playing with the responsive action of Ninja Gaiden but depending on who you’re fighting and how your delimbs are going it can feel like certain enemies just don’t want to die, no matter how much stronger Ryu is supposed to be on paper.
The flashiest and most powerful tool in Ryu’s arsenal is his alternative to Yakumo’s Bloodraven Form: Gleam Form. This is a a reference to Ryu’s True Dragon Gleam in the other games: a powerful ultimate attack that Ryu would complete by doing multiple rapid back and forth slashes so quickly he’s just a blur on the screen. As such when you enter Gleam Form in NG4 every attack Ryu does is a rapid slash that’s too quick for the eye to follow, while having the same properties to disrupt power attacks and do instant kills in certain conditions. Credit where credit is due: Gleam form is very fun to use, looks incredibly badass when weaved into other combos, and really makes Ryu feel like the Super Ninja he’s always called in the lore. As a cherry on top it also draws a very direct comparison with Yakumo as Yakumo generally has to charge up his Bloodraven instant kills and has slower wind ups when using his Bloodraven attacks to counter power moves while Ryu can just instantly Gleam enemies on command with no downtime (assuming you have the meter to spend) which gives Ryu a feeling of never ending offense. HOWEVER, the cynic in me can’t help but think of how this is just as lazy as giving Ryu only one weapon. Yakumo gets dozens of special animations in Bloodraven Form but what does Ryu get? Just a half dozen different multi-slash animations where he conveniently just becomes a blue ghost blur so you don’t need to animate him doing anything crazy.
Gleam is so practical that you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Ryu also has his classic magic ninpo abilities, and that’s for the best because they also feel rather tacked on. Rather than being their own resource like the previous games their use is instead dictated by the same meter that Ryu uses for Gleam Form, creating the trade off of either saving all of your energy for Gleam (which is always the right choice) or using flashy magic abilities that again seem far weaker than they’ve been before due to how durable most enemies are. Take it from me, you won’t miss using them and saving all your energy to Gleam any enemy that looks at you the wrong way is a much better and more fun use of your time. That being said, it’s a shame that ninpo has fallen off as much as it has in Ninja Gaiden as a franchise considering how fun and useful it was in NG1 and NG2, and it’s clear that Ryu really was just crammed into Yakumo’s existing user interface and menu system to the best of Platinum’s ability. All of this put together creates an experience that is still fun to play but at least for me lingered in the back of my mind that it was tacked on and left me wanting a more fleshed out character, which hopefully the additional weapons coming in the DLC will provide.
While we’re closing out this review on downers I wanted to briefly touch on other slightly “off” things that seem to spring up in Ninja Gaiden 4. Ultimate techniques and essence are a big one, where in previous titles it would always feel like essence would come to you too quickly or when you don’t want it to but in NG4 the essence feels almost sticky and sometimes moves to you arbitrarily. The ultimate charging animations also seem a little broken, as Ryu resets his pose for each level of ultimates you charge for some reason, and certain enemies can even block ultimate attacks which seems heretical. This core ability being slightly more clunky and dare I say it undermined also seems to be part of the game’s focus more on the Bloodraven/Gleam abilities as well as perfect dodges and parries, and in the same vein I also noticed basic dodges were slightly less reliable in avoiding damage than I would expect. This is less of a problem if you play into NG4‘s desired play pattern but is definitely frustrating if you’re just trying to dodge everything without perfect timing like you might be able to do in Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. Many players have identified this is the fault of enemies having “sticky attacks” that are much better at tracking you even when you dodge, and I’ll leave that up to you about whether or not that bothers you.
Other minor features from the previous games are missing as well such as running attacks, weapon damage upgrades (Devil May Cry doesn’t have them either, it’s just weird for Ninja Gaiden to not have them) and no bow to easily deal with flying enemies, and quite frankly I would have really liked a bow given the sheer amount of flying enemies NG4 throws at you. Just like the excess items clashing with the level scores this additional focus on aerial enemies seems to clash with the frankly absurd number of bottomless pits in NG4, as the franchise has rarely thrown that sort of hazard at players before. It is not irregular to take down a flying enemy with a combo or god forbid the iconic Izuna Drop just to fall off the map in the process, and while it doesn’t kill you it certainly will eat away at your health. I was REALLY hoping that at some point there would be an upgrade for the game’s grappling hook to pull you towards airborne enemies to help circumvent this, but the best they can do is a stronger ranged option for Yakumo late game while when you play as Ryu you just have to overcome your skill issues. Lastly I have to complain about the voice acting of the two leads as Ryu’s voice acting is the worst he’s had in the franchise and Yakumo’s isn’t much better, especially since by the end of the game we’re supposed to take him seriously but he never stops sounding like an edgy fifteen year old. Everyone else is fine, even if the writing makes them a little more quippy than you’d expect from a Ninja Gaiden game. But that level of pep never infects established characters so it’s not a huge problem outside of, again, the questionable work of our leads. I was never a huge fan of playing the game outside of the dub but I’m definitely going to try it in my upcoming Master Ninja run just to get away from whatever the hell they were doing with Ryu’s voice in this game.
That was a lot of negativity to end this review so I just want to remind you that I really did quite enjoy Ninja Gaiden 4. Frankly my biggest issues are the durable enemies, occasionally weird transitions during the on-rails scenes, the gimmicky solutions to fighting flying enemies, and Ryu feeling at times like a square peg they tried to wiggle into a round hole, but none of these are world-shattering deal breakers. Once you get a feel for the additions to the combat this is probably the most straightforwardly strategic Ninja Gaiden has ever been, as the Bloodraven and Gleam Forms add a whole new layer of responsiveness to your arsenal that before was just “always dodge and learn your i-frames.” The bosses are the best they’ve ever been, Yakumo may not have a great English voice actor but he is well-implemented as a new character in the universe, and there is plenty of content to sink your teeth into with a lengthy campaign (my first run took me 20+ hours due to looking for secrets), challenge missions, and going for S ranks in levels if that’s your thing. It hasn’t surpassed the original Xbox 360 Ninja Gaiden 2 for me and at this point I don’t think any action game ever will, but I would say on average I had more fun moment to moment in NG4 than I had in NG1 and certainly more than I had in most parts of NG3. If you’ve ever had an interest in the franchise it’s a great place to start with a new protagonist and an accessible story, and if you’ve played the other games you absolutely should be playing this one right now rather than reading this review. Two great Ninja Gaiden games in the same year, what a world. Hopefully the sales line up with the quality and we see many more in the future.
